In the uncertainty of what would happen--whether the prosecutions
would be pushed, which was most probable, in the manner intended
against me, and against others, for all of whom, except the Earl of
Oxford, I had as much concern as for myself; or whether the Whigs
would relent, drop some, and soften the fate of others--I resolved
to conduct myself so as to create no appearance which might be
strained into a pretence for hard usage, and which might be retorted
on my friends when they debated for me, or when they defended
themselves. I saw the Earl of Stair; I promised him that I would
enter into no Jacobite engagements, and I kept my word with him. I
wrote a letter to Mr. Secretary Stanhope which might take off any
imputation of neglect of the Government, and I retired into Dauphine
to remove the objection of residence near the Court of France.

This retreat from Paris was censured in England, and styled a
desertion of my friends and of their cause, with what foundation let
any reasonable man determine. Had I engaged with the Pretender
before the party acted for him, or required of me that I should do
so, I had taken the air of being his man; whereas I looked on myself
as theirs. I had gone about to bring them into his measures;
whereas I never intended, even since that time, to do anything more
than to make him as far as possible act conformably to their views.

During the short time I continued on the banks of the Rhone the
prosecutions were carried on at Westminster with the utmost
violence, and the ferment among the people was risen to such a
degree that it could end in nothing better--it might have ended in
something worse--than it did. The measures which I observed at
Paris had turned to no account; on the contrary, the letter which I